Merge discloses accounting errors and irregularities

Merge Technologies Inc. disclosed in its 2005 financial statement filings with the SEC that company executives had bypassed internal controls over the accounting function in order to inappropriately increase revenue and profits since 2002. Correcting these irregularities decreases the company’s profits for those years.
Experts are a bit surprised that the company is admitting to [...]

Carnival of the Badger: All about fraud

Welcome to this week’s edition of the Carnival of the Badger, with your friendly hostess Tracy Coenen of Sequence Inc Forensic Accounting. The Carnival of the Badger is a weekly event, featuring posts from bloggers throughout Wisconsin.
Since this blog is devoted to all things “fraud”, I’ve decided to put a scammy, fraudulent spin on this [...]

Polygamist and fugitive Warren Jeffs apprehended

Warren Jeffs, a known polygamist and fugutive, was caught this week after the Cadillac Escalade in which he was riding was pulled over by the Nevada Highway Patrol.
The trooper who pulled over the vehicle said something didn’t seem right as soon as he approached the vehicle. The FBI arrived on the scene and found [...]

Still nothing done in the Milwaukee Public Museum scandal

Back in January of this year, County Board Supervisor James White suggested that the Milwaukee Public Museum be subjected to the scrutiny of a forensic audit. The museum’s coffers had been emptied by incompetent and possibly corrupt employees.
At that time, Assistant District Attorney David Feiss claimed that he was conducting an investigation of his [...]

Former Milwaukee police officer Jon Bartlett is going to prison

Former Milwaukee police officer Jon Bartlett has been sentenced to 4 1/2 years in prison following his convictions on felony charges related to bail jumping and threatening to blow up the police station where he used to work.
Judge David Hansher called Bartlett a “menace to society” and followed his prison time with 5 years of [...]

New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin takes a shot at New York City

When asked by CBS (60 Minutes) why New Orleans couldn’t be cleaned up sooner following Hurricane Katrina, mayor Ray Nagin said:
“You guys in New York can.t get a hole in the ground fixed and it.s five years later. So let.s be fair.”
Tags: New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina, Ray Nagin

Civil settlement with Prudential Financial to be announced

The United States Department of Justice, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the National Association of Securities Dealers and the New York Stock Exchange, are expected to announce a civil settlement with Prudential Financial Inc. on Monday. This will settle claims that brokers in the company’s securities unit assisted investors to rapidly trade mutual fund [...]

Whistleblowers accuse State Farm Insurance of cheating victims of Hurricane Katrina

ABC News is reporting that State Farm Insurance supervisors demanded that hurricane damage reports be altered so that the company would not have to pay claims.
Kerri Rigsby and Cori Rigsby were independent adjusters working exclusively for State Farm for eight years. They say that they’ve turned over documents to the FBI and Mississippi investigators [...]

Do you blog about fraud?

If you blog about fraud, white collar crime, or scams in general, you might be interested in participating in my new Blog Carnival, the Carnival of Fraud.
What is a Blog Carnival, you say? A carnival happens when someone takes the time to find really good blog posts on a given topic, and then puts [...]

Northwestern Mutual wins case against former agent

In March 2005, Northwestern Mutual filed suit against David Stinnett, a former NML agent in Evansville, Indiana and his company, Policyowner Protection Service Inc. The company claimed that Stinnett and the company started the website www.nmlcomplaints.com in 1999 in order to extort upwards of $100 million from NML.
NML alleged that David Stinnett and his [...]

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